Unmounting/ejecting - make an external drive stop spinning?

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I have a 2012 Mac-mini. I recently bought a new Seagate Backupl+ 5T external drive.

If I eject the drive's disk image from the Desktop via right-click "eject," the drive will not shut down for good. It may or may not spin down after w hile, but it starts seemingly randomly running although I do not use the drive. I have no idea what prompts the drive to spin up.

If I open Disk Utility, I have the option to dismount the volume (drive keeps spinning) and I can, after dismounting the volume, right-click on the drive icon and eject it. The drive spins down. However, as soon as I launch DU again, the drive will no longer be ejected, and while the volume remians unmounted, the drive will spin up.

Here is what I would like:

I want the external drive to not spin unless I tell it to start up, and I want it to shut down for good when I tell it to.

Can someone please enlighten me if what I want is possible or what the best option is that I have.
 

Cory Cooper

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Hello and welcome.

-What version of OS X?
-I assume the Seagate is a desktop model with power supply?
-How is the Seagate connected: USB, FireWire, or Thunderbolt?
-In  > System Preferences... > Energy Saver do you have Put hard disks to sleep when possible enabled? Have you tried disabling it?
-After you eject a HD, you have to power it off manually if it has a power supply connected, or it will continue to spin. If it is bus-powered, it should power off fully, unless it has a power switch, but not always.

C
 
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Thank you for your response.

I am running Sierra. The Seagate is a 5TB Backup Plus powered desktop model, connected via USB 2.0 directly to the Mac-mini. "Put hard disks to sleeps" is not enabled on my Mini, because I want to avoid constantly spinning up and down any drive.

There is no physical off-switch on this drive, and while Seagate supplies power management software for PC, there is none for Mac.

I think adding an inline off-switch between power supply and backup drive is the way to go? Eject drive, switch off. Turn power on, drive will mount.

What do you think?

http://ledmontreal.com/en/led-conne...on-off-switch-for-single-color-led-strip.html
 

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